


Bundle up tight

by JanaRumpandRCJawnn (JanaRumpandRCJawwn)



Series: Modern Magic [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Families of Choice, Gen, Mythical Beings & Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:45:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7193975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanaRumpandRCJawwn/pseuds/JanaRumpandRCJawnn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Makki had to pick the most important spells of his life until now, he'd have to name three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bundle up tight

**Author's Note:**

> Halo :)  
> So here it is, our magic au. It does have much more worldbuilding than this, so let's see what we'll manage to dish out.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> EDIT: the dates/periods/whatever were changed because now we have an actual timeline yey

Hanamaki knew _of_ magic since he was a young boy. Everyone did, and even the youngest of children could say it was a terrible idea to have anything to do with it.

Witches were bad. They laid with demons and used their soul to gain power. They couldn’t be expelled from big towns, but Takahiro knew that small villages used to kill them - or tried to. No one talked about how every powerful person in town had a witch as their patron, how even though they were hated they were also respected. They could save lives - he had seen them doing that. It was very confusing. He didn’t hate them, but he definitely had never seen himself becoming one of them.

He was rich, he had Mattsun by his side and a perfect future ahead.

And then everything went south.

His parents decided he had to get married, because people were talking about how close he was to Mattsun. He looked at the girl and he had full conscience she was being forced into this for a similar reason. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, Issei got sick. No one knew what he had, but it was obviously consuming him inside out. His friend couldn’t get out of his bed, had fevers almost daily, and nothing seemed to work. Not all the money his parents had was enough to do something about it. And at his house Takahiro’s parents wouldn’t stop saying he shouldn’t go there every day, that it was bad for his reputation. That he was spending more time with his friend than with his bride to be, and it was very impolite. Issei had his own bride to hold his hand in the end.

All of that angered Makki. He tried everything, went to temples and more temples, but his prayers fell to deaf years.

A turn point came in the form of an older woman, who held his arm and gave him pause as he stormed of yet another set of unanswered pleas. She held his arm, grey hair and blue dress brushed by the breeze, light as the smile on her face. She looked like the happiest person around there.

“Your wish must mean a lot to you, boy, if you keep coming back for it.”

He was about to reply when he noticed the amulet on her neck - he had seen the symbol before, it belonged to the local coven of witches. It all clicked then. Magic could be the miracle to save his best friend.

“It does.”

“What would you do for it?”

“Anything.”

She laughed at his answer before hooking her arm with his.

“I doubt it. Few actually think about what that means when they say it, but let’s go for a walk anyway. And you will tell me your wish.”

And he did, he told her about how Issei is this special person, how he couldn't picture a future without him, that he didn’t want it. She listened to everything he said, and some part of him was so grateful she did. He'd needed that and no one else would let him. When he stopped speaking they were in front of a house, a rather fancy one he knew to be the coven's. She paused, her voice clear as could be.

“Magic could save your friend, but not ordinary magic. Not something anyone in this coven can do. The kind of magic needed to pull someone from death’s door is the kind created by a first spell.”

“First spell?” Takahiro was confused, and it showed.

“The spell you sell your soul for. The entities we deal with don’t offer wishes, they offer the knowledge to fulfill your wish, and they unlock the magic inside you. The whole _do anything_ really applies to this?”

“It does.”

He was so tense, but she kept smiling and it didn’t seem that bad.

.

.

.

Takahiro felt weird.

Like his blood was pumping faster inside his veins even though it wasn’t. He felt the tips of his fingers cold, and when he looked he saw a white fire on them. He entered the house and walked past the servants, who seemed too in shock to do anything about it.

He entered Matsukawa’s room and found his friend’s parents crying on a corner and his heart shrank a bit. He looked to the bed, to the covered body of his friend. Fuck, this was not good. The spell covered this, right? It had to. It fucking had to. It was a spell to breath life back into Mattsun, it had to work, it couldn’t have all been a waste.

He felt his whole body shaking as he stepped closer. Hanamaki knew what he had to do.

“What are you doing, Takahiro?” He heard them asking as he knelt beside the bed, and fuck, he did not care if they sounded so scared. He didn't care for much right now.

He touched Issei’s cold hand and felt a shiver running down his body before starting the ritual. Somewhere in the back of his head he registered gasps and someone trying to pry him away, but he didn’t budge, kept reciting the chant, letting the energy pour out from him.

When he was done he felt so drained, like he could sleep forever and not be rested. Still he didn't move away, didn't sit back. This had to work. He had worded his wish so carefully, he had made a choice that would make everyone he knew despise him for it. He just had to get it right.

He kept whispering pleas to the energies, until he felt the cold hand he still held twitching. He looked up and watched as Issei sat up for the first time in a too long while. Mattsun blinked at him and Takahiro felt tears rolling down his face.

“What happened here?” He voiced strangely, but that didn't matter. Just as the horrified gasps he could hear, meaningless. “Why are you crying, Makki?”

All he could muster to do, with so little strength in his body, was rest his forehead against his friend’s shoulder.

“I’ll explain later. Just don’t go anywhere right now.”

_**202 years later** _

Witches - even though common sense may say otherwise - are a very sociable group of individuals. Makki hadn’t considered that when he made his exchange, had never considered himself much of a people person. However, he soon learned that all witches have their covens - and currently, following a bunch of laws the government had approved, all witches were practically forced to have one, be it from their hometown or just the one that they adapted to the better, or many times just one for the official records. And though their first loyalty would always be to the coven, it wasn’t unheard of witches joining packs or other groups of supernatural beings. He had accepted a coven because he needed someone to teach him how to do magic, he needed help getting the tricks of how to keep Mattsun’s spell going. And he needed a place where he wasn’t that different, but that was just sappy, so he wasn’t about to tell anyone.

The Iwaizumi pack, now _that_ hadn’t been quite a choice. He and Mattsun had moved - seeing their relatives growing old and dying was uncomfortable to say the least, no matter that they hadn’t looked in their faces for years. So one day they waved their meager goodbyes and moved on to a bigger town. For more than a century it had been just the two of them in their small shop, selling spells and potions, until a young woman (short and dark skinned, as beautiful as determined) entered their shop and asked for a curse.

Hanamaki usually just said he didn’t do those (curses are bad for a witch's reputation and all) but Issei asked her why. And she explained, composed and angry all the same, that a friend of hers was being hurt by her husband, but since the woman was a succubus everyone said she should be grateful he'd ever married her in the first place. Takahiro couldn’t just let something like _that_ happen.

So he cursed a man, but not with the usual bad luck, oh no, he cursed the man with the worst nightmares, he cursed him with a brand on his cheek that made every witch he crossed know he was a bad person (which may have resulted in other witches cursing him, but Makki was not responsible for that). And from that episode he walked out with a pack of werewolves that just adopted him and Matsukawa. He surely hadn't been expecting that.

What Takahiro had expected even less was that he would end up adopting members of that pack too, that he would be godfather to the firstborn children of those women, that he would end up with Tooru and Hajime in his life.

“Uncle Makki! Uncle Mattsun! We're here!” Tooru called out from the doorway.

Takahiro turned on his heels to see the two six year olds entering the shop, bouncing in their excitement. The young incubus ran over to Issei who was currently sweeping the floor, and got a soft smile in return.

“Well, I hadn’t even noticed.”

Hajime climbed on the counter with great agility - those big canine eyes and fangs were always a bit scary at first, if Takahiro were to admit, before one remembered what a sweet child Hajime actually was. The witch patted his head twice, but continued working on his spell. Issei came over and took the boy in his arms and off the counter.

“Uncle Makki is working right now. Let’s wait a bit.”

Makki did need to focus, spells were a very delicate process. If the slightest thing went wrong a fire spell could turn into a life sucking dark one. Seeming spells such as the one he was now preparing were particularly tricky, but also kind of an specialty of his. He could feel the children watching him work, silently urging him to finish already. Then with a flicker of his hand he was done and could feel the magic coursing through his tattoos, giving them a pale green light.

“I’m ready!”

“What were you doing, uncle Makki?” Tooru asked, those big eyes staring at him.

“It’s a spell called Seeming. It makes you seem like something else to everyone around you.”

“Why did you make it?” Hajime asked frowning a bit - damn, that boy was always so suspicious of everything.

Takahiro rested his forearms on the counter, getting to the kids' eye level, and winked.

“'Cause today there is movie exhibition at the planetary - and guess which movie they are showing?”

“Which movie?” They asked, both seeming so damn excited and curious.

“Godzilla.” And they both cheered so happily it melted his heart. “So I thought, Godzilla, in a place full of stars? I gotta take my boys there.”

And Oikawa looked down, suddenly sobering.

“But I can’t go to crowded places.” Tooru’s tail was now flopping down, and he was the saddest image Takahiro had ever seen, so the witch wiggled his fingers letting the magic become visible in colorful traces.

“You can with seeming.”

These places had very weak magic dispellers, seeming was too powerful for them. The boy's eyes lightened up and he basically jumped to the witch’s arms. Hanamaki smiled while wiggling his fingers and letting Tooru’s form change into an average human boy's - no more horns, no more tail or fangs or claws. It was all still there, but no one would physically inspect him. And as the kid caught his reflection on the many glass surfaces of the room, the smile he gave made all the effort for this spell to be worth it. All the arguments with Mattsun and all the money he had spent on ingredients vanished with all that brightness.

“I look so... nice.”

\--

There weren’t many things witches considered a taboo.

Creating life forms that didn’t exist before was not forbidden - no magic was forbidden _per se_ -, but it was very dangerous, the chance of something going wrong in a ritual like this was very pronounced. And even after the ritual there was no guarantee things would work out, though that didn’t mean people wouldn't occasionally do it.

Takahiro himself had never done anything like that - Mattsun didn’t count, he used to be alive - and he quite condemned it, playing gods never ended well. That didn’t mean he didn’t play a bit with destiny, Issei was a proof of that. And the cat was another.

They found the cat on their doorstep on a Sunday morning, injured and near death. Not a normal cat with normal injuries, this one was probably a kami or something like that. Hanamaki hated the idea of becoming a necromancer, but destiny seemed to be running after him.

Issei had found the poor thing, and sat beside it to scratch its ears and give it potions for pain. He seemed as miserable as the creature itself.

“Who did this to him?”

“Some asshole.” Makki gritted his teeth, before changing the plaque on the door to closed and starting lighting the candles.

“What are you planning to do, Makki?”

“Something very dumb. I’m turning this cat into something else. I’m unlocking this being’s potential, if you will.”

“You do have a thing for dealing with the dead.”

“I’m always a slut for necromancy.” He spoke up, and then facepalmed. This was really not the kind of thing one should say.

“Dude. Dude, no.”

.

.

.

He woke up still very very very drained, and sat up on the bed to see an unfamiliar figure watching him. A child - no more than eight or nine years old - with cat ears and eyes and wearing one of Mattsun’s sweaters. The boy cocked his head to the side, seeming only slightly interested on Takahiro.

“Mister Matsukawa, your friend woke up.” The kid called out, speach stilted, and Issei entered the room smiling softly.

“Hey, Makki, you scared us. Passing out on the floor and such.”

“Us?”

“Yeah, me and this tiny guy over here.” He patted the child’s head. “His name is Akira, and I was wondering if he could like... Stay with us.”

Takahiro frowned staring at the child. Cat spirits weren’t famous for being too sincere or polite, but fuck it, it was just a child. A child that had been left for dead, that might have been brought back but still was injured and looked very weak. And well, it's not like Makki hadn't ever imagined what it would be like, he and Issei with a child in their place - perhaps some stupid part of Takahiro wanted a family, sue him. He was two hundred and forty years old, and he kind of wanted to try out this parent deal.

“Does he want to stay with us?”

Akira stared at them, his tail moving from one side to the other while he considered the option.

“It’s better than being on the street.”

Hanamaki got up and walked over to Issei.

“Well, I suppose I won’t be the only one calling you Daddy anymore.”

His friend laughed and pushed Takahiro away from him.

“You're so terrible today.”

“Come on, Mattsun. It could be worse.”

“Not by much.” 

Issei did say that with a smile anyway, so there was that.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all liked it! Tell us about it if you will :)
> 
> many kisses  
> -jana
> 
> P.S.: wb notes! I don’t know why those were missing here
> 
> About the time span, turned witches are virtually immortal, having charged their bodies with so much magic so suddenly that it no longer works quite as it should. Mostturned witches were human before (though some were not, but that’s rare and something we’re hopefully addressing at some point in the series)
> 
> About cubi (incubi/succubi), society is mostly shitty to them. They’re labeled predators (along with vampires, genies and ghouls, those who feed directly from humans - not necessarily only humans, but those who make the laws are very much biased). Oikawa loving looking like a human is a fact that’s gonna come back to bite them in the butt later
> 
> The Iwaizumi pack is a werewolf pack though half their members are actually other beings. Werewolf are both naturally and culturally inclined to take all the strays in, hence the biggest families
> 
> Akira is a bakeneko, a cat shapeshifter in this case turned by magic (as most are). He ages slower than a human too - tbh humans are the frail species here, only lucky they reproduce like there’s no tomorrow. 
> 
> Any questions feel free to ask!


End file.
